7 Visual Blocks to Reading 

Phonemes

Phonemes are sounds that we humans make, that make up our words in our language. The English language has 44 sounds, according to Diane McGuiness who wrote "Why Your Child Can't Read and What You Can Do About It". The term Phonemic Awareness refers to the ability to use sounds for reading - identifying, blending, separating (segmenting), and manipulating them.

Yet, we rarely think about sounds; we use words to speak, and when we read well, we read words very quickly. It is when we are learning to read that we really need to know about the sounds of the language. We have been listening to sounds since before we were born, so it is more natural to learn how to read using sounds than letters. Before we can attach sounds to letters, we have to be able to hear and process sounds.

Auditory Processing Problems

There is a difference between hearing and processing sounds. Some of the people who have an auditory processing problems hear very well! As a matter of fact, many of them have such hypersensitivity to sound that they score very high on a hearing test. Unfortunately, the scoring high may indicate that they are so sensitive to sound that hear everything at a very loud volume, and cannot separate out the sounds. They may hear the teacher, but the other sounds in the classroom, such as the buzzing of the lights, the blower, people writing, whispering and the chairs squeaking, all contribute to their inability to hear ONLY the teacher.

Other problems with an auditory processing disorder would be:

1.      To not understanding rhyming

2.      To get sounds out of sequence

                  For example, to say bisketti instead of spaghetti

3.      To not be able to "hear" the difference between sounds that are similar:

                  Short vowel sounds

                  The sounds made by the letters s, f, sh, and ch

                  The sounds made by the letters m and n

4.       To mishear sounds, requiring a person to have to think about what was said and make sense of it. For example, the person may think they heard elephant, but the word telephone makes more sense in the paragraph. It takes a couple of seconds to do this, so the person may say "what?" frequently in order to get a little more time to process.

Diagnosis of Auditory Processing Disorder

A diagnosis of auditory processing disorder is obtained by an audiologist and the subject of the testing must be at least 7 years old. Typically, if a diagnosis is found several accommodations are suggested which can be implemented by the school. Preferential seating and giving more written instructions are typical.

What to do

Although there is no cure for an auditory processing disorder, many steps can be made to improve the auditory processing and possibly the accommodations will no longer be needed. I have seen this with many of my clients.

Setting up the brain to process sounds

If the problem is not hearing loss and it is truly an auditory processing disorder, it probably has been there since infancy. If so, this means it is a developmental issue - the ability to process sounds never developed in the first place. With my clients, the first step is always to recreate the stages in infancy that were missed or only partially completed. These stages in infancy are called primitive reflexes.

Primitive Reflexes

  Auditory hypersensitivity - comes from a "retained Moro Reflex" and can be helped by doing the exercise from the video https://youtu.be/fQ4K9sw7by8

   Auditory processing - comes from a "retained Spinal Galant reflex". This and other reflexes/stages of development can be taken care of by doing the exercises from Maintaining Brains Everyday DVD which can be found at www.pyramidofpotential.com/store

Setting up the auditory system to process sounds

Once the brain is set up to process sounds through the integration of the primitive reflexes, it is much more likely that therapy designed to stimulate the auditory system will work more effectively, efficiently, and last long-term. I have seen clients whose therapy did not stick more than 6 months when the primitive reflex work was not done first.

There are several therapies currently that stimulate the auditory system. Some are done in a clinical setting, some are done at school or at home, and some are done on-line. Although there are some differences, and some may have better results than others, the best one for you is the one that is accessible and affordable.

Listening Therapies, in alphabetic order:

Auditory Integration Therapy

Interactive Listening Systems

International Sound Synergy

The Listening Program

Therapeutic Listening

Tomatis

This may not be inclusive, as new therapies are developed all of the time.

Use a curriculum that directly teaches the phonemic awareness

Growing Brains Everyday is a curriculum that was written with the teacher and parent in mind. It includes the DVD Maintaining Brains Everyday for reflexes, and 150 days of specific lesson that take 10 minutes a day. There is full phonemic awareness, some vision exercises, plus other activities to improve working memory, processing speed, writing and math. You can find it at http://www.pyramidofpotential.com/store/.

The final piece of this whole puzzle is to find a great program that will put it all together. Perhaps a local tutor or learning center. Or your school has the best in reading methodology. It is always best to work with a professional, but if can't for some reason, a good resource is Reading Reflex  - a book with a method that works quickly, once the other problems have been fixed. The author is McGuinness.

This is a great time to improve the ability to read! Enjoy it!!